03/06/2025
This phenomenon of landlords increasing rents at will even without any commensurate improvement to the quality of the house requires attention. Urgent Attention ⚠️
1. People build houses and attempt to recover the cost in one year or two, it’s not done that way.
2. Landlords keep adding rent for little or no improvement done to the house; from 50K/month to 80k/month because he has renewed the paint of the house.
3. A small student room, kitchen and bathroom is averagely 45K/month, an amount even more than the minimum wage of the Republic, then imagine a studio or a 3-bedroom apartment;
4. The government has remained silent with no modalities on rents fixing and increments that should take into consideration the size of the rooms, the internal design and decoration, the purpose (business, office, student hostel, residential)…. Nothing, absolutely nothing.
5. A student manages to get 500K to return to the university, and 480K is gone for rents, then they are inevitably bound to device mechanisms for survival. This is partly why the town of Buea just like most other towns, is breeding a lot of social ills like hookup (refined and sugarcoated version of pr0stitut!on); and the blues venturing Into scamm!ng and r!tuals just to meet up with the cost of living ;
6. In addition to the increments, the landlords exacerbate the situation with an additional “caution fee” as they call it, that is supposedly refundable if no major damage is caused by the tenants, but not up to 5% cases have received their caution fee even when quitting the house in good state.
7. Amidst this constant increments in the rents, the incomes are not properly taxed.
8. Not only the landlords do exaggerate and exacerbate this housing problem, house agents have worsened the situation. They charge a displacement fee of 10K (for a house you may probably reject) and then a service fee equal to 1-month of rents.
9. The government has to promptly look into this issue of sporadically increasing rents by landlords that drastically reduces the quality of life, increases hardship and widens the rich-poor gab.
10. This phenomenon a violation of economic rights of the citizens as contained under Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
And the rents not being taxed is equally an offense and a huge lapse on the effectiveness of the state finance department.
Ministère de l'Administration Territoriale du Cameroun
Direction Générale des Impôts Cameroun
Ministère de l'Environnement et du Développement Durable
Human Rights Watch
Ministère de la Défense du Cameroun
Ministere De La Justice Cameroun
Ministère des Finances Cameroun
Community Hub for Inclusive Development
Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africans
